NAND technology has been around for many years, only recently have we seen this kind of quantum leap, fueled by the ever-present AI revolution.
NAND flash memory retains data without power, and has been used for portable devices like MP3 players for years. NAND is a non-volatile storage and has a structure that has these memory cells arranged in series. While
"Best company around. Faster than Samsung and WD."SK hynix.
If you haven’t heard of that name, you’re not alone, but did you know that they were the first in the industry to unveil the progress on the development of a NAND with more than 300 layers in detail.
To offer some context, KIOXIA developed a 112-layer vertically stacked BiCS FLASH 3D flash memory, Micron came up with a 232-layer NAND and now Sky hunix plans to start mass production of their 321-layer NAND in the first quarter of 2026.
The first 321-layer 4D NAND
The first 321-layer 4D NAND was showcased in Seoul on August 9th, 2023 and promised to improve productivity by 59% when comparing it to 238-layer 512Gbs, an earlier generation NAND. This made SK hynix the first company to succed in a NAND with over 300 layers.
While Samsung will have their own 430-layer for 2025, their current SSD is only 290 layers (V-NAND). This is where it gets interesting: string stacking in mass production has only been adapted by and handful of companies. For good reason.
